Brent Bates – Conquering the Corrupt NCAA System

“Ninety percent of the NCAA revenue is produced by 1 percent of the athletes. Go to the skill positions—the stars. “Ninety percent are Black…,” says Sonny Vaccaro. Since signing his pioneering shoe contract with Michael Jordan in 1984, he has profited off the labor of the Black athlete by building sponsorship empires successively at Nike, Adidas and Reebok. (Glen)

During the 2014–15 academic year, only about 50 percent of black male student athletes graduated, compared with about 69 percent of student athletes overall. The African American male-student athlete rate is below the 58 percent graduation rate for all black undergraduate men and significantly lower than the 75 percent rate for all undergraduate students. (Dwyer)

African American student athletes have yet to understand the power that they hold. As the overwhelming majority of the NCAA’s income, they must demand that measures be taken to aid them in their pursuit of higher learning. The opportunity to earn a degree from some of the most prestigious universities in the nation, also grant with it the ability for astronomically higher earning potential… post graduation.

Coaches go to the end of the earth to recruit players at the top of their boards. They go to homes of low-income kids, they sit on the couch with their single mom and promise how much they’ll take care of them. Nevertheless, they will allow those students to dropout without giving them every chance to succeed in the classroom like they would on the court.